If you'll remember last week, Esther got her hands on Elijah (Daniel Gillies). This week's episode is all about the aftermath of that battle. We especially delve into the characters' motivations, which is sure to only deepen the family drama.

"Esther's drive is 'I knew when I made my children into vampires I was trying to save them. I had no idea that they would become these beasts that would live for a thousand years, feed on innocent blood and create a disease that is vampirism that would spread all over the world,'" Narducci explained.

Now that she's back from the dead, Narducci told us, her motivation is to make up for the history of her children by, in Esther's mind, saving them.

That's where the backstory of tonight's episode comes into play. Enter Dobrev taking on the role of dopplegänger Tatia.

"It was phenomenal," Narducci said of working with Dobrev on The Originals. He continued that without Dobrev the story "wouldn't have the same impact."

Tatia is a character we've heard of before but haven't seen. And Dobrev definitely delivers on giving us something different. Aside from her perfectly styled dreadlocks, Tatia is her own person. It's a credit to Dobrev that she can play so many different versions of herself and still make them all unique. It's also a credit to The Originals that they've found such an interesting way to tell her story without making it feel trite.

"There's these cycles of violence that just keep repeating," Narducci said of the Mikaelsons' past. But there's an origin to the violence, too. One the show will be exploring this season. We have a feeling Tatia is just the beginning.

Esther brings up this sordid history with Tatia as the beginning of her effort to make her children so miserable that they beg for her to change them. Narducci hinted that Esther wouldn't be the only one jumping bodies this season. He also said it would be possible for characters to jump to their original bodies. We'll repeat that: Characters might jump to their original bodies. Meaning we might see the original Kol and Finn in the present instead of just via flashbacks!

"Like a kid who joins the Marines, you get broken down and then you get built back up," Narducci said of Esther's ultimate goal.

As we saw in the last episode, she got her hands on Elijah first and will, therefore, make him her first target.

Sidenote: We'll find out what happened to Oliver, who was also snatched by Esther, in Episode 6.

"What is the thing about Elijah that we've always said is, kind of, his weakness?" Narducci borrows from DC Comics to say that Elijah's kryptonite was revealed all the way back in Season 1, Episode 7.

"You can see the way he looks at other vampires as though they're scum. He doesn't like other vampires. He's fallen in love with Katherine, and he's had moments where he's respected certain other vampires, but when he saw Elena in Vampire Diarieshe said how much she reminded him of the goodness of being human," Narducci said.

This might, surprisingly, make Elijah the weakest target for his mother's manipulation.

"Elijah hates being a vampire, so his decoy mechanism is to dress it up," Narducci said. And Elijah doesn't just use fancy suits and that smug grin. It's also an interior process for him as we'll discover in tonight's episode titled "Red Door."

Do you think Esther will be able to get under Elijah's skin? Find out tonight on The Originals at 8/7c on The CW.